1. Technical Field
This invention is concerned with gluing to a horse's hoof, either to attach an object such as a shoe or to repair a crack in the hoof.
2. Related Art
Examples of potential equine applications for adhesives include attaching objects, e.g. polyurethane horseshoes, and patching cracks. However most available adhesives do not adhere sufficiently well either to the hoof material, or to the object being bolded to the hoof, or to both. Even if reasonably good static bonds are achieved, failure often still occurs as a consequence of the high stress to which the bond is subsequently subjected when the horse runs. The impact load on the hoof is typically about 2000 pounds. Also the curing time of many adhesives presents a major problem; the adhesive must be substantially set in minutes or at most tens of minutes since a horse cannot generally be held inactive for an extended period.
These problems in one form or another cause all the common adhesives as normally used (including hot melts, epoxies, urethanes, acrylics, and cyanoacrylates) to have shortcomings. Although satisfactory bonds have been achieved for a few special configurations, there does not exist in the prior art any process generally successful across the spectrum of potential applications.